Welcome to Pulse 2012! 8,000 attendees from around the globe are here to learn how they can change the economics of IT and speed the delivery of innovative products and services.
The theme of this year's Pulse is "Business without Limits" and with hundreds of sessions including topics from cloud, mobility, smarter physical infrastructure and security, your options at Pulse are nearly limitless too!
Check the Pulse SmartSite to search for sessions on the subjects that matter to you and watch the Pulse website for the latest resources from Pulse, including live video of the event, the current Livestream schedule, a video library, picture gallery, and keynote slides.

Sunday Highlights

Danny Sabbah opened the Pulse 2012 Solution Expo opened with a ribbon cutting ceremony, which officially kicked off Pulse 2012.
It was a full house at the Solution Expo, which features the newest technology and next-generation solutions from IBM and IBM Business Partners.
Visit the Pulse 2012 Sponsors, including Diamond Sponsors Toshiba and
Trend Micro, in the Expo today!
The Solution Expo will be open from 12- 7 p.m. on Monday, 12 - 6 p.m. on Tuesday, and 12 - 4 p.m. on Wednesday.

While many of us were settling in to Pulse,
IBM Business Partners were taking in a full day of strategy sessions!
Hosted by Ernest Jones
and sponsored by Arrow ECS, Gemini Systems, and Innovise ESM,
the Tivoli Business Partner Summit featured a wealth of advice on how to embody this year's theme of Be Bold. Be Tivoli. Be Limitless.
Ernest was followed by Brendan Hannigan, GM of the IBM Security Division, and
Jamie Thomas, VP of Tivoli Strategy and Development, who shared product roadmaps and her perspectives on the Tivoli marketplace. Tivoli General Manager Danny Sabbah shared insights, Mark Register hosted an interactive panel of partners and clients, and Lou Attanasio described
the keys to "Excelling at Selling." They were joined by special guest speaker
Alison Levine overcame a life-threatening heart condition to become the first American woman to accomplish the Adventure Grand Slam
(successfully climbing all seven summits and reached the North and South Pole). Alison inspired the crowd on how they, too, can become limitless through leadership, teamwork, innovation, and dealing with change.
Partners also had a choice of six breakout sessions. IBM Business Partners can find the presentations for those breakouts on the PartnerWorld Tivoli Knowledge Center.

A highlight of the Business Partner Summit each year is the Tivoli Business Partner Awards. Congratulations to this year's winners:

The Pulse International Connection Reception provided a fun and festive event for Pulse attendees from 79 countries.
Host Joao Perez greeted the entusiastic crowd and shared the top five countries most represented at Pulse outside of the US: Canada, Brazil, the United Kingdom, Mexico and Australia. Overall, 34% of all Pulse attendees are from outside the United States.

Hands-on Labs and Certification Testing also opened Sunday.
With more labs this year than ever, participants took part in exercises about a wide variety of IBM software products. Lab titles are listed in your pocket agenda and full lab descriptions are available
here and in the Pulse SmartSite.
For Certification testing, the choices are nearly unlimited: you can take any of the certification tests IBM offers right here at Pulse!
The Hands-on Labs and Certification rooms are located in the Studio Ballrooms A and B, near the Grand Garden Arena entrance. Follow the signs to take part in these valuable opportunities.

Win an Apple iPod Touch!For each session you attend while at Pulse, you will find a session survey on the Pulse SmartSite.
Submit your session surveys for a chance to win. Each day there will be a drawing, and the
winner receives an Apple iPod Touch, sponsored by Alliance Tech, Inc. Each survey submitted
is an entry to win, so complete your surveys today!

Pirean are internationally acclaimed experts in the consultancy, implementation, enhancement and support of IBM Tivoli Software. The World's most accredited Tivoli partner for 2010 and 2011, Pirean’s unrivalled Software and Services portfolio guarantees to deliver first-class Security and IT Service Management Solutions for high-performing organizations globally. (Booth P317)

PowerPlan is an enterprise software company providing asset-centric accounting, tax and budgeting solutions. Companies leverage PowerPlan and Maximo to help generate cash, mitigate compliance risk and enable a cost management culture. The world’s most demanding asset-intensive companies trust PowerPlan to manage over $2 Trillion in assets. For more information visit www.powerplan.com (Booth P318)

Today's healthcare providers and payers are building sustainable healthcare systems, while collaborating to improve quality, outcomes and personalized care and increasing consumer value and access. Join us at Pulse 2012, a premiere IBM Service Management event, from March 4-7 in Las Vegas, to explore these issues and learn how IBM solutions are helping healthcare providers and payers achieve business without limits to address important topics like new service delivery models such as Cloud, physical and digital convergence in facilities management, demands from the growth of mobility, and managing and securing data.

Over 300 client-driven speaker sessions are confirmed for Pulse including presentations from The Johns Hopkins Hospital, University of Utah, and WellPoint. Pulse will help you learn how to fundamentally and cost-effectively change the economics of IT and speed the delivery of innovative products and services by building skills and gaining insights in critical healthcare topics, including:

Smarter Hospitals and Healthcare

Effective Compliance Management

Operational Excellence through Asset Reliability

Pulse 2012 will also be featuring the latest technology initiatives and next-generation solutions offered by IBM and our business partners, where clients can experience demonstrations addressing important topics for healthcare providers like Smarter Hospitals, Maximo Mobile Suite, and Delivering Effective Governance for Identity and Access Management.

More than 7,000 attendees will take part in Pulse 2012. Register now to secure your space at http://ibm.com/pulse

We look forward to seeing you at Pulse 2012!

Keep visiting our blog ibm.com/blogs/pulse for more updates. And for more information on our energy and utilities industry solutions, visit ibm.co/zaCzh0

So. We picked a guest speaker for Pulse, one of IBM’s flagship conferences. And this time it’s not a sports hero. This time we picked someone more renowned for his serious passion to save the world. For real. Our dude is busting his rump to save us from the fire and brimstone we’ll be swimming in when all the glaciers melt. And since we here at IBM have been talking the talk of building a smarter planet, I’m thinking our choice makes a lot of sense. Because the world wouldn’t be so smart if we all got dead. There’d be all these data centers floating about aimlessly. Just saying.

Ladies and Gentleman of the blogosphere, please put your fingertips on your keyboard and prepare to tell the rest of the interwebs that we are honored to host:

United States Army Veteran,

Best Selling Author,

Grammy Award Winner,

Academy Award Winner,

Nobel Laureate,

and 45th Vice President of the United States,

Al Gore, Cooler Planet Crusader in Chief.

But if says he’s building an arc, I’m still not buying stock in the big box home improvement center that’s breeding grackles in its 40 acre parking lot. They’re chasing away all the song birds. I’m just saying.

It has been gorgeous Friday here in sunny Austin, Texas at a nice 65-70 degrees. It’s only fair to give props when props are due, especially since I have used this blog to gritch about the oppressive heat last summer, which ended yesterday I think.

So! Onto the real reason I brought you here:

Did you know that you peeps only have like two weeks left to get your proposals in to present at Pulse? I know you all have an IBM story to tell. Maybe you don’t think anyone would want to hear it or maybe you are concerned that you don’t have time to prepare. Or maybe you just don’t think that there is good reason to bother.

Nonsense, I say to thee!

First of all, this offer isn’t just for high-ranking executives or big business partners. We also need the folks who actually hands-on run the stuff we sell your company. Does it work? Did it get you out of a fix? Did it prevent you from being in a fix? Did it save more money than it cost? That sort of thing.

And thirdly, do you realize what an opportunity this is? You will be immortalized!

Seriously, we promote the heck out of the good stuff people say at Pulse. Why on earth wouldn’t we? We might even interview you on camera (if you let us) and put you on our YouTube channel and Tweet, Facebook, and of course blog about you. Client presentations from Pulse are wildly popular. My colleagues ping me weekly with, “I need So-and-So’s presentation from Pulse 2009 for a meeting with [client, executive, press, you fill in the blank]!” We’ll make you famous (sort of).

Here are some more goodies for our speakies:

One full conference pass ($1995 value).*

Use of our exclusive Client Speaker VIP Lounge.

Networking opportunities with over 5000 industry experts, press and analysts.

A profile of your success story in the Pulse agenda/curriculum guide.

EAM papers are eligible for the Maximo best practices award.

What are you waiting for? The deadline is November 2 and the clock is ticking!

Hoping to capitalize on some clever Internet trend or hilarious current event for my next blog, I discovered something called the Top 20 Marketing Trends of 2009 on Google. This list managed to be both dull yet somewhat intriguing all at once. Dull because it was a list, which I find inherently boring. Intriguing because I wanted to see just how “on” it’s predictions were. Did it predict what was obviously already a trend, or did it predict something altogether fresh that emerged in March or June?

The truth is, I don’t know because I never made it past trend #1: Recession Marketing. The author writes,

“Expect a lot of marketing messaging related to the recession. Don’t be surprised to see lots of offers that “save you money” throughout the year. With fewer purchasing dollars available, how will your marketing message be distinctive and stand out?”

I confess that the word “Recession” kinda makes me shudder. It’s like the Bogeyman. Spooky and invisible. Now that I have your attention, Recession seems to say, let me infect you with anxiety and paralyze you with pessimism.

On the other hand, the Recession has inspired all of us to pause and ponder our situation. It is always wise to think, but thoughts alone never saved nor earned a penny and the only thing we have to fear is fear itself, right?

So let’s give the Bogeyman the boot!

If you are managing a dynamic infrastructure as executive leadership, security, operations, storage, production, delivery, facilities or communications service, the way to do this is to reduce cost and risk to the business and amp up the service quality and delivery. You probably already knew that, but did you know that IBM Service Management can provide the visibility, control, and automation for your business to lead a successful transition through the recession?

Where to Begin

Pulse 2010 will be THE epic mashup of education, innovation and networking around service management. If you only choose one event in 2010, Pulse is the one you can’t afford to miss where you will learn new, proven ways of deploying service management solutions, which could have an ROI benefit 10 times higher than the conference cost.

Immediate Savings,Options and Deadlines

The most valuable opportunities to get started with this business of reducing costs and improving service are only available for a few more weeks. And since you, loyal customers, keep telling us that your top priority is to figure out ways to preserve capital and cut operational expenses, this is one opportunity you must not let pass.

Free Admission to Pulse: Clients Speakers attend FREE. We are accepting your proposals until November 2. Submit a 100-word abstract of your successful application of service management here.

Save up to $600 on Pulse:Register by November 16 and save $500 on a full conference badge for the Premier Service Management Event. Register as part of a group of 5 or more from the same organization and save an additional $100!

If your management needs more proof that Pulse is a wise investment, fill out this Business Justification Form and present them with the facts.

Get thee to Pulse and we can all say bye-bye to this notion of Recession Marketing and the Bogeyman.

This week marks a milestone for the Pulse team as we kick off our plans for the 2010 conference this week. With my enthusiasm and curiosity to see what we come up with to maintain our creds as the Premier Service Management event at an all time high, I did what I do every day. I logged into Facebook.

Not that I thought that people would be posting, “Hey Pulse! We want more Cloud Computing sessions in 2010” or “Hey IBM! Bring back Magic Johnson!” I go to Facebook every day because it is a full-blown addiction of mine. If everyone I know wasn’t also addicted, I might have already begged for an intervention in a previous status update. Evidently, this predisposition for social media addiction is not unique to me and my “friends.” Look what I found on the IBM Pulse wall (names and faces concealed to protect the innocent):

Sounds like a cry for help and, judging by the digital face that follows her confession, she is truly concerned. That is, until she discovers she is not alone in this situation.

But I digress. Why didn’t I think I would be blown over with requests and suggestions for Pulse via our online community? Because in the two years since we launched the Pulse online community, I have been asking for suggestions and feedback on the event on all our social media channels and have gotten just about zero response to such open ended questions like, “What can we improve?” Or “Who would you like to see as guest speaker?” It seems what motivates people to share thoughts in an online community is just as unique as the spots on a leopard. But just as every leopard has spots, every social networker has something to say. When you add up all the comments, they represent what is common throughout the community.

Hence, this social media voyeur has learned that there is great value to be gleaned from lurking around Facebook and Twitter (LinkdIn too, no doubt) while planning an event for 5000 people.

Before I hedge my bets on what the Pulse 2010 agenda may or may not feature, let me share four common themes represented on the Pulse Facebook wall today.

1. More people are Tweeting and Facebooking more than ever from various mobile devices.If “I want my MTV” was the social slogan of the 80s, “I want my Web 2.0” should be the slogan of our decade. I remember watching MTV for hours to catch a glimpse of Michael Jackson's "Beat It." Today, we can watch anything, anytime on YouTube, and more of us are using phones, laptops, whatever. The evidence? More and more of the mobile icon next to status updates:

2. More people are retweeting and linking Twitter with their Facebook and YouTube accounts.I actually felt bad for United Airlines when I saw a retweet of a not too favorable blog, "If you won't listen, someone will." A disgruntled passenger’s complaints about a damaged guitar were ignored. The ignored passenger recorded and posted a video about his experience to YouTube on July 6, 2009. This video already has nearly 3 million views in just a little over a week. Ouch. Maybe United Airlines should send someone to Pulse 2010. We can help with that.

3. Sadly, there are still daily wall posts that reflect the state of the economy.While some are sharing their pink slip news, others are chronicling job hunts. The one that that tugged my heartstrings was the Facebooker who reported discontinuing Blackberry mobile data services to make necessary cutbacks. *sniff*

4. It’s hot out there. I don’t need Facebook to feel the heat, but there are plenty of posts on my wall about the heat wave, global warming, the rising cost of energy, and the looming cap and trade laws.

If I were a betting person, I would put money on chances of a continued conversation about the exponential growth of data and digital devices and how to manage them responsibly on the new smarter planet, also characterized by an ailing global economy and changing climate.

Attending the Pulse 2009 conference in Vegas was one of the highlights of my year. How could I ever top all the great people, topics, demos, products, solutions, services, innovations, fun, and excitement at Pulse? Honestly, I don't think it's possible. You just had to be there! However, if you'd like to get a taste of the experience or extend your own Pulse experience, I recommend some of the links below:

-Use #ibmpulse in Twitter search to see tweets of others. -Use this Twitter feed to syndicate alerts to iGoogle or MyYahoo. -Send a direct message to @ibmpulse if you want to catch my attention or ask me to syndicate something out to the larger Pulse community.

Pulse on Facebook: Get Pulse alerts, post to the Pulse wall, see who else is coming to Pulse, and network with the Facebook community.

Pulse on YouTube: View and comment on live stories with Pulse attendees. Share your own videos by friending Pulse.

Just got out of Day 1 of Pulse General Session Kickoff. I was unable to get a stable connection in the Theatre, so I’ve had problems in uploading media to the two channels below, but keep checking since I should have cool stuff I’ll be discussing throughout the conference uploaded soon:

Laura Sanders and Alan Ganek, in comedy style mode, discussed demos of how Tivoli products help with Dynamic Infrastructure. I got a kick out of their Sunny and Cher-like comedy. They started off with a Pizza video that they wove through the whole demo discussion. Alan quipped, “There has to be some way to bring intelligence to your door, Laura.” Laura slammed him back on the petitions she received requesting that he not sing on stage. And several hecklers from the audience threw in “and dancing!”

Jim Haney, Harley Davidson CEO, spoke on how important Tivoli products are for delivering a superior experience.

Tom Rosamillia, General Manager of IBM WebSphere Software, spoke on how SOA and Service Management together help deliver the Dynamic Infrastructure vision and invite folks to learn more at the upcoming IMPACT conference in May.

John Brandt, from the MPI Group, spoke about how Convergence is a great opportunity moving forward. As a community strategist, a key point he kept reinforcing that resonated with me was that Customers are rarely buying a brand. For instance, they are not buying beer, but relationships and community. Yup!

He says we all should be asking three main questions: What do your customers really want? Can employees deliver real innovation? Do your processes drive consistent measurable progress?

Repeated theme throughout the entire morning was: Who will lead the charge for a Smarter Planet and Dynamic Infrastructure: You! You! You! Rich Esposito, VP of IBM IT Strategy and Architecture Services, specifically called out CIOs, stating they are in a bittersweet spot--being challenged to align with both the demands of the business and the world. He said they are in the best position to lead the journey and transform the waters. The good news is that being a good citizen strategically also helps in lowering total costs in managing IT and business infrastructure in the long run!

I met some pretty cool people (Melanie, Cass, and Gino below) and was treated to a freshly prepared tofu dish when the kitchen ran out of reserved vegetarian meals since an unexpected number of folks wanted to enjoy tofu as well. Never knew so many people liked tofu. Go figure. Cool. J

After lunch, I was off to the Business Partner Summit’s keynote address.

One of my favorite moments was when Al Zollar, General Manager of IBM Tivoli Software, ignited laughter and applause after mentioning that we were looking forward to an exciting week with Michael Phelps speaking next week, but “hopefully not too exciting.” J

And, of course, my other favorite moment was watching Al announce the IBM Business Partner winners of the Innovation Award and Service Management Solution Award.

Solution: Delivery of Tivoli Access Manager as a SaaS to Vantis Life Insurance. Very timely opportunity and provided low cost entry for Vantis Life. *Tivoli Access Manager (theme: SaaS Delivery of Tivoli Product)

Lighthouse Computer Services first provided VantisLife Insurance Company (a provider of affordable life insurance products marketed through the banking industry) with a Security Assessment that revealed critical areas of vulnerability. As a General Business size company, VantisLife was an excellent candidate to benefit from Lighthouse’s unique and innovative solution, the Lighthouse Gateway. The Lighthouse Gateway provides managed security services for corporate identity and access management in a compliant, cost-effective, and industry-leading open solution.

The solution for VantisLife includes Tivoli Access Manager (TAM) for eBusiness and opens the door to supporting VantisLife’s pursuit of the full benefits of IBM’s industry-leading software, including Tivoli’s full SOA Service Management portfolio.

---------------------------

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1st Runner-up: EMA, Inc.

Contact: Wendy Huber-Wicheltwwichelt@ema-inc.com

Solution: Open access to Maximo db so that calls for pipeline and other right of way locates can be automated and tickets opened for personnel to fulfill those requests. *Maximo (theme: integration)

EMA assisted Orange County Utilities (OCU) of Florida in their efforts to better manage customer excavation requests inside utilities’ service areas for water, wastewater, and reclaimed water. OCU engaged EMA to configure Maximo to support utilities’ line locate business processes in accordance with Florida’s regulatory “Call 811 Before You Dig” statutes.

The solution required EMA to build an interface between Maximo and the state-wide computer application used by Sunshine State One Call of Florida (One Call) to manage excavation requests from contractors and homeowners. EMA also installed an interface between Maximo and OCU’s GIS, providing OCU’s locate staff and locate contractors with the most recent spatial data edits of underground infrastructure.

generationE’s Resolve Runbook Automation solution streamlines event, incident and problem management with context-driven correlation and intelligence through Tivoli Netcool Omnibus and Impact.Resolve is an innovative wiki-based runbook automation system that captures and automate best practices for IT Operations. The solution is designed specifically to promote collaboration and process reuse without the overhead of traditional document management applications.

Resolve’s integrated automation system leverages existing investments in tools, scripts and utilities to transform static procedures into actionable tools from which users can perform diagnostics tests and resolutions on-demand or as a coordinated process in response to alerts. With Resolve, runbooks become actionable and are easy to keep up to date.

The generationE Resolve platform ensures that events are processed with Tivoli Netcool context-specific

diagnostic and remediation procedures. In turn, these best practices are captured as Resolve runbooks with

Solution: Selected as winner due to breadth of references, breadth of products deployed, and focus on delivering the "single pane of glass" visibility across entire IT and comms infrastructures.

Advanced Dashboards provides an integrated systems, network and security management view for operators, managers and high level executives, providing end-to-end alignment towards IT service management. This solution collects data to support event correlation, root cause analysis, service availability management, SLA monitoring and business impact management, and then displays this information in a dashboard. Information is consolidated in a single, business-driven, user-friendly layout composed by dynamic and visual elements such as graphs, topological and geographical maps, and special icons.

This integrated dashboard helps increase the overall availability of IT services through the early detection of highly impacting problems and a business-oriented prioritization of events and actions. It also reduces operational costs by clearly indicating root-cause alarms.

With Advanced Dashboards, different management disciplines and products (such as Netcool Omnibus, Impact, Webtop, ITM, Proviso, TNM, TSOM) are integrated into a single solution that entitles a paradigm shift towards a pro-active, service-oriented, operations.

This solution is impressive for its breadth and depth.It’s a global implementation at one of the worlds largest companies, Ford, and it supports a wide variety of business processes including Inventory Management, Trouble Management, Incident Management, Change Management and Maintenance.It also can automatically identify the problem, determine the impact and severity, and create an appropriate ticket or provision a resolution to the problem.

This solution allows the customer to leverage a heavy investment in Inventory and Provisioning systems and have this information drive a consolidated service assurance platform so as to consolidate and compress operations globally through a highly developed Incident Management System. It really demonstrates Visibility, Control and Automation.

IT-Lifeline uses a powerful combination of certified engineers, Tier-4 data center facilities, IBM pSeries servers, IBM enterprise SAN storage, and Tivoli Storage Manager to provide online data backup, archive, and recovery services.IT-Lifeline installs Tivoli Storage Manager Client software at the customer site, establishes network communications, and configures the TSM server environment at the IT-LifelineContinuityCenter.Data is then transmitted at the frequency selected by the customer to the IT-LifelineCenter.Overall management of backup operations, to include scheduling, storage policies, growth management, and data availability are managed by IT-Lifeline.IT-Lifeline is currently backing up over 50 corporate data centers throughout the Pacific Northwest.Customers have grown to depend on the security and availability of IT-Lifeline managed data.

Selected due to strong customer testimonial and "dynamic infrastructure" tie-in of the TSM solution; showcases the kinds of "dynamic" solutions we want customers to achieve with our software.

So this week, the United States had a big moment. You know, the one right before Barack Obama was supposed to surrender his Blackberry. Yep, the oath. Well, technically we had two moments since he re-took the oath on Wednesday. But today is Friday, and as Mr. President has rolled up his sleeves to get to work on all his campaign promises and more, we humble IBMers continue ours.

With less than 15 days away from the second annual Pulse conference, some of us are just a tad anxious as we close in on the home stretch to February 8th. After all, Pulse 2008 was such a smashing success and we promised to make Pulse 2009 even more fantastic. That was a big promise. One we intend to make good on.

But I confess: we had a little help. From the world.

Amazing that a world with all its problems from global warming, to economic crisis to dwindling food, water, and energy resources would have the bandwidth to offer our little show a hand.You know what they say: “You want something done, give it to a busy world, right?” Or something like that, anyway.

The world may be getting busier, but it’s also getting smarter. And more instrumented and more interconnected.This realization led us to build Pulse through the lens of a busier, more challenged, but smarter planet. That’s when the Pulse team had a little moment of our own – our “light- bulb” moment, if you will.

Joining the Pulse News Network for the duration of the conference are television journalists, Forrest Sawyer and SuChin Pak, who will be breaking all the big stories at Pulse, and they’ll want to know:

“Smarter infrastructure is by far our best path to creating new jobs and stimulating growth. We at IBM were asked to map this out by President-elect Barack Obama's transition team and our research shows that a $30 billion stimulus investment in just three areas -- smart grids, health-care IT and broadband -- could yield almost one million new jobs within one year.”

The holidays are over. Did ya have a good one? Great! Glad
to hear it. Me too. Now it’s time to get back to work. And that means getting
back to the future. As in the immediate, impending future.

I’m not talking about getting back into the gym so you can
sport a great shape in time for spring break. I’m talking about getting back to
preparing for your future, as in securing the longevity of your business in
2009.

One of the easiest ways you can ramp up momentum for a fast
start in 2009 is by planning your personal agenda for Pulse in Vegas from February 8-12.What I mean is that
whether or not you’ve registered for Pulse 2009 yet, you are invited to create
a virtual schedule of the Pulse conference sessions with our Online Agenda Builder.You can select which sessions
you want based on what is most relevant and enhancing to the objectives
associated with your role in your business and industry. The Online Agenda Tool
enables you to explore the Pulse agenda, which you can organize by track,
topic, speaker, time of day, labs, expo . . . whatever! Did I mention that you
don’t have to be a registered attendee to use this tool?

Don’t you always get jazzed when planning a trip? Of
course you do. But we know it’s tough out there. Taking exciting trips is
something many of us delay until we feel better about spending money. That’s
exactly why we’ve invited 200 expert clients speakers to share how they
leveraged the hardware, software and services of IBM Service Management, for everything from the IT
convergence with business, to incident and problem management. IBM Executives
and industry leaders will share how IBM Service Management can deliver quality
service on any scale, while addressing some of the most prominent global
fascinations, including what’s really going on with cloud computing why a
smarter planet requires a dynamic infrastructure. You’ll get more service
management bang for your buck for years to come in four action-packed days this
February.

Pulse is a one of a kind opportunity that is knocking now
– right at the time you need it. Anyone with a stake in Chemicals & Petroleum, Electronics, Manufacturing,
Telecommunications, Energy & Utilities, Retail, Banking, Insurance,
Defense, Travel & Transportation, Energy & Efficiency, Virtualization,
Business Resiliency, Storage & Information Infrastructure, and Managing
System Z should consider attending Pulse a top priority.

Still not convinced? Check out your options with the Pulse
Online Agenda Tool. This simple and free exercise is sure to give you
inspiration and motivation for the New Year, and justification for making the
trip that could jump start recovery or secure long-term survival.

Okay, okay. IBM Service Management might not be
saving the world the same way heroes in a Hollywood movie would. But unseen
heroes do exist. They may not be glamorous or even know they are heroes. You
might know some of them. You might even be one of them. And right now, they are
out in force doing their best to help businesses survive the [now official] recession.
I'm not talking about the Fed, or Congress, or anyone on Wall Street. Who then?
Not just who, but what. As in who does what.

Stay with me. I'll cut to the chase now.

In a nutshell, the digital and physical
infrastructures of the world are converging to the point that global
integration impacts every aspect of business. To run sustainable businesses,
companies need to work smarter and integrate smart choices into day-to-day
operations. IBM Service Management is made up of the smartest heroes,
technology and strategies that can help your business survive the these tough
economic times. Quite a leap in logic? Oh, ye of little faith! Miracles can
happen when you've got purpose and
innovation on your side. Want to know more? Come to Pulse for four
action-packed days at the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas, NV. Over 200 IBM
clients, IBM executives and industry experts, aka "the Heroes" will
showcase how IBM Service Management can deliver quality service on any scale,
while addressing some of the most prominent global fascinations, including:

*
Drowning in Data? -- Meet Tougher Service Level Requirements with Less
Infrastructure

*
Tame the Explosion of Information with IBM Information Infrastructure

*
Balancing Risk with Opportunity: Security Trends and Strategies for Business
Leaders

*
Customer Panel: Tales from the Cutting Edge of Service Management

*
Breaking Down the Barriers between Dev and Ops

*
Taking the Next Steps on Your SM Journey

Visit the Pulse Web to register while there’s
still time to save on registration. The Early Bird registration special of
$1795 ends Friday, December 5, 2008. Then stick around and learn more about the
following streams of our agenda: